N E W S
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This file summarizes *major* changes to the WML sources, i.e.
between each *revision* (1.x -> 1.(x+1)). Take this logfile
for detailed information about user related or visible changes.
___________________________________________________________________________
Major changes between 1.7 and 2.0:
- Several improvements in wml_p1_ipp:
The -S and -I flags are now processed in right-to-left order
so that these flags in .wmlrc files have precedence over
.wmlrc files above.
Variable substitutions can now be nested and new constructs
have been added. The only restriction is that parenthesis
inside variable expansion are forbidden in inner expressions.
New automatic variables are provided to ease generation of
diaporamas (automatic references to previous and next files).
Block comments are no more supported by wml_p1_ipp.
- Meta-HTML is replaced by mp4h for Pass 2: the new parser has a
syntax very similar to the one of Meta-HTML, and tags have been
defined to ensure maximum compatibility. Please read
README.mp4h and the wml_p2_mp4h documentation for details on how
to migrate from Meta-HTML to mp4h.
- Allow nesting of wml_p3_eperl commands: this is one of the
biggest challenge of WML 2.0 whereas it is entirely transparent
for end users. Read the wml_macros(7) manpage for details on
how to write nestable macros.
- Promote alternate syntax in wml_p5_divert: until wml-1.7.0,
pass 5 used expressions containing angle characters. In many
situations this could confuse pass 2, and so an alternate form
without angle characters is preferred. Old syntax is still
valid but should be avoided. Note also that WML 1.7.3 and
1.7.4 provided a slightly different syntax which is not
supported anymore.
- New include files:
wml::std::label implements labels and references
wml::mod::version ensures that a recent enough WML is run
wml::mod::MakeMaker is to help writing portable WML modules
- Wwwtable is replaced by freetable, a GPL replacement. Syntax
is very similar and input files should work without changes.
- Support for both GIF and PNG formats.
Logos are shipped in both formats, and generated images may be
written in GIF (without the patented LZW algorithm) or PNG (if
PNG library and headers are found) formats.
Modified versions of libgd and GD are used to support both
formats.
- Change format of ISO dates
Format was previously dd-mm-yyyy and it has been changed to
yyyy-mm-dd to conform to ISO standards.
- A global base name may be used for generated images: instead of
defining IMGB_BASE, IMGDOT_BASE,... it is now possible to define
IMAGE_BASE and all generated images will refer to this variable.
- Better processing on files in other directories: the main goal
is to allow use of the VPATH feature of GNU make to build
webpages into a test area before compiling webpages. This
does only apply to the wml binary, since there is no reason
to mix WMk and Makefiles.
Major changes between 1.6 and 1.7:
- Enhanced time dependency checks for wmk: wml accepts a new
flag to mimic how gcc handles dependency checks. This way,
wmk rebuilds the target when it is older than the source
file or than any file included during pass 1.
- Easier multi-lingual files generation: instead of using
the pseudo-shebang line, one can put the -o flags into
the RC-Files. Moreover some new commands have been
included in wml::std::lang to help writing compact and
self-explanatory source files.
- Defining variable without value: until now, the -D flag
accepted a var=value pair, and returned an error if no
value or an empty value was found. This was confusing
because major programming language accepts these two
forms, and because it was impossible to undefine a
variable. Now -Dvar is equivalent to -Dvar=1 and
-Dvar="" allows you to clear a variable.
- Big changes in configuration stuff: it is now done with
the same files as Apache 1.3, instead of the GNU ones.
- Improve include files: new functionalities have been
added especially into wml::std::toc, wml::std::lang and
wml::des::navbar. Bug fixes have been committed to deal
with quotes inside attributes.
- Y2K fixes : all programs have been checked. It does not
mean that WML is fully y2k compliant, but we do our best.
Anyway, WML does use dates for a) check time dependency
(WMk) and b) print current date.
- Help to write cleaner HTML pages : the htmlfix program
is improved, and new third party tools are put in
wml_aux : HTML-Clean and tidy.
- Add a keyword search in WMd: the Website Meta Language
Documentation browser becomes more friendly with this
nice tool.
- Denis Barbier <barbier@imacs.polytechnique.fr> is the
new maintainer of WML.
Major changes between 1.5 and 1.6:
- Big source and installation tree cleanup: the configure
option --enable-compat was removed, the files
wml_include/OBSOLETE* were removed, the wml_p*/ subdirs
were moved to wml_backend/wml_p*/, etc. pp. And in
addition to this reorganization the backends and
auxiliary programs are now installed in PREFIX/lib/exec/
instead of PREFIX/bin/.
- Cleanup of include files: tag names were renamed
(especially in wml::des::navbar) to avoid namespace
conflicts, tags were merged (especially in
wml::std::box), tags were generalized (especially the new
wml::std::logo), double-defined tags were removed
(especially wml::sup::stack and wml::usr::rse), etc. pp.
- Revised a wrong design decision of the early days:
Comments are now supported in Pass 1 and not in Pass 8
and they are now supported in a more general way:
EOL-mode (#) and Block-mode (/*...*/) comments. This
pass shift was done to get rid of comments as quick as
possible. This way we now really can comment out _any_
stuff and as a side effect processing is a little bit
faster.
- A new manpage was introduced: wml_tags(7), a permuted
index of all defined WML meta-tags.
- A lot of minor stuff was fixed, added or at least
generalized: the WML -p, -V and -P options, RC-File
parsing, HTMLfix quotation parsing, slice errors, etc.
Major changes between 1.4 and 1.5:
- New Platform Portability Test Suite: A PORTING.text
script was added to the distribution which can be used to
run a portability test and which displays a platform
entry line on success which then can be added to the
PORTING.L file. The PORTING text file now is
automatically build out of the PORTING.L entries.
- New GNU Autoconf option: ``--with-cc=PATH''. This
equivalent to setting CC=PATH before running the
``configure'' script but follows the same idea as
--with-perl=PATH.
- The maintainer files for the packaging mechanisms of
various Unix derivates have been added as
wml_contrib/pkg/ for reference. Currently there are files
for the FreeBSD Ports area, the Debian dpkg mechanism and
the RedHat Package Manager.
- Added new include file: wml::std::lang. This provides a
high-level interface for multi-lingual support via
Slices.
Major changes between 1.3 and 1.4:
- The source distribution again was cutted down by
approximately 100 KB, especially by removing unnecessary
database support for Meta-HTML in the wml_p2_mhc/*
subtree.
- Now Speedup mode (introduced in 1.3) is the default
processing mode and the -s option now stand for --safe
and can be used to use the slow but more safe
forking-based approach of starting the Perl-based WML
passes. The trick of the Speedup mode is that the
frontend `wml' precompiles the Perl scripts into its
memory and evaluates them with the current interpreter
instead of using the system() call.
- A new Curses-based frontend named WMd (WML Documentation)
was added for nice and easy access to all WML manual
pages (works correct even without correct MANPATH). The
reason is because WML has a lot of single manpages with
non-trivial names and such a startup page simplifies
access to the documentation. The side effect is that you
now need a SVR4-compatible Curses-library (like NCurses
or S-Lang) to build WML. The used tool for browsing is
iSelect which was added to the distribution under
wml_aux/iselect/
- The long-awaited internal <protect [pass=SPEC]>..</protect>
container tag was added. This can be used to protect
*any* data from being processed by any WML pass. While
such protections can be applied after any pass, the final
output data is unprotected after pass 9 only. Use this
new feature for protecting page contents which would
conflict with any WML functionality.
- Now the long-awaited new wml::des::navbar killer include
file replaces the old version. This is a complete new
approach to create navigation bars. It is based on the
idea of defining a grammar-like structure and let this
structure be rendered later. The structure itself is
completely independed of the used HTML markup code, so any
type of navigation bar can be created. There is although
additional support for rollover effects and Plain-Text
variants.
- Divert (WML Pass 5) now supports named leave tags, i.e.
you can leave a diversion by name which has the effect of
leaving it and all other diversions which were entered
from within it. This way one can use a templates more
then once in an input file.
- Now ePerl and thus WML supports the Perl Locale
environment which makes WML support international
character sets, for instance in the <sc>..</sc> container
tag from wml::des::typography
- A new wml::des::preload include file was added
for minimal preloading support of images.
- Another frontend: WMb -- Website META Language Bug
Reporting Tool. This can be used to easily sumbit a bug
report to the WML author.
- System variables like WML_GEN_HOSTNAME now can be
overwritten by -D options on the command line or in
.wmlrc files. For instance this is useful to overwrite
informations for the <info> tag from wml::std::info with
correct values.
- Various 3rd-party software upgrades:
ePerl 2.2.8, Bit-Vector 5.0b1, Slice 1.2.7
- Numerous minor enhancements, portability changes and
bugfixes were done on the various WML passes and WML
include files. See the file ChangeLog for more details.
Major changes between 1.2 and 1.3:
- New options -s which speeds up processing by avoiding fork()s
- New feature in HTMLfix (pass 7): out-commenting HTML tags (<xx#>)
- New feature in HTMLfix (pass 7): post-indenting (<indent>)
- Cleanup of all WMk and WML options, including GNU long-options
- Enhanced WML -v1 output (table format)
Major changes between 1.1 and 1.2:
- HTML tag overwrite support (via <tag*> and </tag*>)
- Pass 8 (HTMLStrip) overhauled (removed incorrect stripping)
- Pass 1 (IPP) enhanced (new __FILE__, __LINE__ and $(VAR) stuff)
- Perl compatibility changes ("use lib" replaced by "BEGIN/@INC" variant)
- New manual pages: wml_intro(7) and wml_tutorial(7)
- Cleaned up distribution [Step 2] (removed unnecessary stuff)
- Upgrade to ePerl 2.2.3
Major changes between 1.0 and 1.1:
- Fixed command line argument bugs (especially -DXXX=YYYY)
- Changed GNU Autoconf option --with-closedworld to --with-openworld
- Cleaned up distribution [Step 1] (removed unnecessary stuff)
- Upgrade to Slice 1.2.4